Sunday, October 10, 2010

The balance changes in our next patch will primarily focus on improving the zerg.

Here are a few of the changes we currently have planned:

• We're increasing roach range. This will allow roaches to be more effective in large groups, giving the zerg more options in the mid to end game.

• Fungal Growth will now prevent Blink, which will give zerg a way to stop endlessly Blinking stalkers which can be very challenging to deal with in large numbers.

• The Barracks are going to require a Supply Depot, which will impact a lot of early terran reaper pushes.

• The reaper speed upgrade will require the Factory, which is meant to weaken a lot of the early terran reaper attacks that dominate so many matches, especially in team games.

• We're making a number of increases to the health of zerg buildings, which will make the very vulnerable zerg technology structures more resistant to raids. We don't expect these hit point changes to have a super significant impact on the game, but the current numbers felt way too low.

From these changes, if they are all implemented, I think reapers would be useless, unless they make another use for them.